


Bodies

by koldtblod



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: COVID19, Corona Virus inspired, Episode: s04e01 Done Running, Gen, General trigger warning if you're affected by the current world events, Louis-centric, Pre-Clementine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:13:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koldtblod/pseuds/koldtblod
Summary: Louis remembers the first week of the outbreak. And the second. And the third. He doesn't remember the sound of his mother's voice. He wishes he could block out other parts of the memory.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> Covid19 inspired, perhaps a little obviously. Started writing this on a whim on Friday evening, after my housemate went out for the evening (came back saying everything in the city was closed up for good) and I started thinking about the impending doom of society. I’ve been, thankfully, unaffected by the Virus — still been in employment, haven’t been ill, friends and family with health concerns are isolated already. Everyone’s hanging on.
> 
> Still, I got to thinking. And I needed a break from my AU! So here we are.
> 
> Perhaps don't read if you are a little sensitive to current world events — gets a little grisly.

Louis remembers the first week of the outbreak.

They were young, all of them. There were many other, older kids who crowded in front of the television set in the common room, watching the news as they never had before.

Isolated cases.

_A man in his late fifties rushed into the hospital today._

_The first death in relation to this mystery virus in Flint, Michigan._

Some kids were taken away. Obscure relatives or Mom and Dad or Nana showed up in the car and bundled them inside, wide-eyed, panicked, telling the other children and teachers alike to keep their distance.

Josie Clarkson's parents had worn face masks.

Their social science teacher had scoffed and told everyone that lessons would proceed as normal. It’s just the flu, he’d said; just a lot of rubbish, a poor excuse for people to get out of work.

He blamed the insurance companies. The government pay outs.

Said, "And frankly, what a load of nonsense."

Louis had called his parents. He tried not to worry when Dad told him about Grandpa being in the hospital. When Mom had coughed into the phone and said that she’d ring back later in the week.

Dad lived closer.

Mom lived miles.

Marlon told Louis that his parents weren’t answering any phone calls at all.

Then, the newspapers. Shoppers in cities panic buying. Supermarkets running out of bread and pasta. Someone broke into the food bank and stole a trunkload of tins.

Everyone crowded back around the television.

Dirty looks were given to the girl in Louis’ grade with a runny nose and who said she had asthma.

_There are now cases being reported as far out as China._

_Government officials are urging everyone to stay inside._

Rumours spread. Teachers began to disappear. Kids were crying down the phones to their parents in the Headmaster’s office. Whispers of going into quarantine and the word 'pandemic' floated around in the hallways, although Louis hadn't known what that meant.

“There are reports of people being attacked!” someone told them.

And they heard through the grapevine that Omar’s cousin had passed away.

Someone’s dad left the state entirely.

Louis remembers the confusion.

He and Marlon barricaded themselves temporariliy into the dorm room. They’d fought as well on the very same night, throwing punches, hurling furniture — unbridled ten-year-old anger.

“At least,” Marlon had shouted, “your parents are coming back for you!”

But Louis didn’t know that they were.

Dad’s phone was disconnected. The hospitals were overrun. Mom sounded distracted whenever he tried to ring. She said the army were coming in real soon, that he’d just have to wait a little longer; to think of her voice, think of her face, remember she loved him.

And Louis stopped calling. Either that or his mom had stopped answering.

These days he finds it difficult to recall.

The reports were no longer broadcasting. One evening the power just shut off completely.

In the dark, he sat and said to Marlon,

"You’re my best friend in the world wide world, d'you know that? I’ll never, ever desert you!"

And now Marlon’s dead.

A lot of kids are dead and have died and still, no one knows if their friends and family ever made it through the first few months alone of the apocalypse. Louis would love to hear the menial dribble of the weather forecast on a Saturday morning now.

_Weekend sunshine, climbing to 77°F today._

_Partly cloudly, with a gentle breeze. Colder into the evenings. Watch out for mosquitos._

Ruby was only eight years old when she guided Brody through another hyperventilating panic attack. Brody kept repeating,

“They’ve left us, they’ve left us!”

And there wasn’t a teacher in sight.

Only Ms Martin stayed behind amongst the madness. Mended broken fingers and scraped knees and taught a couple of kids how to sew stitches.

Others ventured into the wilderness. They took kitchen knives and tore apart chair legs from the seats and went out in search of help. Never seen again.

Someone locked Martinez in the janitor's closet for three days because he wouldn't stop coughing.

Before the power went out, the reporters had told them,

_Symptoms include fever and a persistent, unwavering cough._

So Martinez had been the first to die.

Alone in the dark in the closet.

He’d only been out of state on some family vacation a week before the outbreak, or so the stories had been. The gaping of his mouth, the rolling eyes, the yellow skin, and Erin's agonised screams when she found him haunt Louis even to this day.

He still sees Erin's body writhing on the ground. The other children pulling Martinez off her. The teenage boy wrestling the seven-year-old onto the floorboards, punching him once, twice, then caving his skull in.

Erin continued to scream as blood poured from the wound on her face.

"We're all going to die," said Louis.

He still thinks it now.

Clementine's a stranger to a school they'd held down since the very beginning. Marlon's body is growing cold beneath a blanket on the steps of the admin building.

She didn't know.

Louis remembered.

They all remembered, although no one will ever talk about it. Sometimes he passes Violet in the hallway, close to where they'd dragged the bodies of their classmates; hadn't managed to ever scrub the floorboards completely clean of the children's blood; and their eyes meet, and they look away.

Louis knows his mom had become one of the walkers.

His grandpa, at the hospital.

And Dad, waiting on the news.

All of them.

And he thinks perhaps that Marlon's family never even made it out of Georgia and, in a way, he's glad that Marlon always said they'd up and left him. Had thought he'd been abandoned. Carried the anger and never got rid of it.

Never hurt like Louis, who tries to recall the sound of Mom's voice through the telephone. Dad's final words. Sees everything else in vivid detail — the blood, the death and the carnage — and wakes, even, in the middle of the night, when the screaming in his head becomes too loud. But he can't remember his parent's faces.

He still thinks they would have come to collect him, if they'd just had a little more time. If the highways had stayed open and someone had asked the general public not to bulk buy all of their essentials.

_The number of of critical cases now stands at an estimated 2400 in the state of West Virginia alone._

_We have no way of telling how long this pandemic will last._

Louis falls onto the steps next to Marlon’s rag doll body, and more desperately than ever, he tries to forget.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks! Hope everyone's doing ok.


End file.
